my life is indeed strange and wonderful

you know, one of the things i love most about living in a cartoon town is the constant parade of cool cartoonists that come through each year, as well as the constant camaraderie with the local tribe. i got to play some guitar and sing at a reception for lynda barry last night with my buddy gabby schulz on banjo and vocals. b.c.sterrett (distant cousin to cliff sterrett?!), an exceptional musician as well as graduating senior at CCS opened up the night’s musical entertainment. the night was a drunken exclamation of joy and comics love, complete with shots of Bushmills all around. sadly, no photo evidences are available.

i just spent the last few hours doing research for a writeup i’m thinking of pitching to the comics journal about the early 90′s university of texas newspaper (daily texan) cartoonists (chris ware, walt holcombe, tom king, jeanette moreno, robert rodriguez, john keen, lance myers, shannon wheeler and corey koleman) with an eye towards a lot of exposition on texas cartooning history and the significance of the connection with austin and the university with many of the creators from the region. it’s something i’ve been threatening to write about for a long time and i’ll probably never finish it.

it was nice to immerse myself in lone star cartooning history. sorta shamanistic, really. or like green lantern recharging his ring. yeah.

Discussion (4) ¬

Hey, Cat, I urge you to write the article — only you can do it justice, and it also indicates that the new ‘art comics’ movement has deep roots in Texas, just as the underground comix movement of the ’60s had deep roots in Texas (Jaxon’s GOD NOSE, Shelton, etc.).

hmm…just wondering if this Tom King is the guy who I knew at summer camp. We went to the same camp for a few summers in a row and kept in touch over the winters. He moved from Nederland (i think) to Austin when he was in High School. He is the right age. Oh well, I will continue my internet search. He was definitely funny (had a comedy show on the camp radio station) and drew cartoons for the camp newspaper.

I went to UT from 1990 to 92 and had the immense privilege of enjoying the excellent Daily Texan cartoonists, especially Tom King and Walt Holcombe, who I found particularly funny, quirky and poignant (a strange combination indeed).

I’ve just ordered Walt’s compilation “Things just get away from you”, but I’d really, really, REALLY like to be able to read his Daily Texan wonderful strips again. Is there any way, short of flying to Austin and xeroxing said cartoons from UT’s old periodical collection, to enjoy Walt’s work again????

I was wondering what happened to Tom King and this page turned up on a google search. Like Alex O, I went to UT in the early 90s and read the daily comics religiously. I was pretty knowledgeable about daily strips as a form because growing up in Washington DC, I read the WaPo every day and they would run like 100 comic strips at a time, I don’t know if they’re still doing it, but it was a huge number of comic features, more than any daily newspaper I know of. So by the time I went to Texas I had probably read like 100,000 or more daily comic strips.

Anyway, there was definitely a very good cohort at UT back then. I guess they were like a class that was inspired by Berke Breathed. Of the group, I liked Jeanette Moreno’s drawing style, but Tom King was head and shoulders above the rest. I would rate him top 5% of working strip artists for drawing style, and top 2% for gag and general humor quality. He also tried to do innovative stuff like the photographed strips where he was in drag. I always wondered what happened to him because he was so talented, I wanted to continue to enjoy his work after graduation, but at the same time, there was a subtext in the strips that he didn’t feel comfortable with the compromises of being a daily strip artist, getting taken on by a feature syndicate etc., and of course in the 90s there was a lot of new stuff going on with the growth of graphic novels, webcomics and so on, which would have been attractive to someone like him, as you know.

I was just poking around on the Net and it seems that he worked on Futurama for a while, so at least I have part of my answer. I also think the article you discussed is a great idea and I hope you do finish it, some topics deserve to be researched even if the outcome is only an internet publication rather than print. Email me if you finish the article or if you know any other info about TK.